dodgy bidding: been outbid, you guys want the bike?

[Carsten]

if someone bids 79, 99 etc. you can almost bet that it's shill bidding as there is no risk of becoming high bidder. any serious bidder would bid at least round amounts or 1 or 2 more. one more example why it is better to bid late, a few seconds before auction ends. esnipe etc...

carsten

 

[JeRkY]

what rubbish, i often bid odd amounts in order to have the chance of beating some one by mere pence.

 

[Anthony]

what rubbish, i often bid odd amounts in order to have the chance of beating some one by mere pence.

Me too, I paid £16 for something on Saturday when I could have got it for £15.01, most annoying. Not that I'm desperate for 99p, but just that I felt I hadn't done a good job, that's all.

I still don't see how you could bid incrementally without risking becoming high bidder. Surely even if you bid the minimum that eBay requires, that could still leave you as high bidder if the existing bid is that bidder's maximum. And the bidder in this case went from 90 to 99, which was actually more than the eBay minimum and certainly carried a risk of becoming high bidder, so I don't see why that is suspicious.

 

[cchris2lou]

In that case it is suspicious , no doubt about it .

I always bit stupid amounts , but if my max price was around the £100 , I would not put £99 , I would put above £100 .

 

[manitou916]

[removed]

 

[Anthony]

Look at this example the other day:
http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 0192789639

Bidder 4 put in 8 bids in 74 seconds, going from 53 to 83, each basically for the eBay minimum, but I'm very confident that the seller was genuine because I was in touch with him and he seemed fine - I would have outbid the winning bid if the seller would have posted the bike. I personally can't understand bidder 4, but then I can't understand lots of people. But I don't see anything suspicious about it, just that some eBay bidders behave as though they're at a physical auction and don't realise that eBay is different.

 

[orange71]

Tap, tap, tap... I know what auction you're talking about. An interesting point that I don't think you mentioned is that in the 1st auction the buyer and seller were both from Nottingham, so it doesn't make sense that buyer wanted the bike posted.

Obviously he wanted more money for it, hence no second chance offer. And the private lisiting, so the shill bidding is less obvious this time. I also notice that your high bid in the 1st auction was £80, and suspiciously the rival bidder in the new auction bid £79 to take it right up to your max last time.

It could be that a genuine (newish) bidder done his homework on you course... but I doubt it. Given all the information I would have withdraw my bid, but with less than an hour to go you can't now anyway. It's still a good price though!

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, but as you say good price anyway, so have stuck with it. Fully expecting last minute snipe though, so what the hey...

 

[orange71]

well, 10 mins to go, been outbid (as predicted): any of you guys want it?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0202411347

 

[Martin]

Well I can understand the peolple who bid themself on one side, but on the other side dont sell it on the ebay then. If I want to have a certain price for a part I'm selling I will put it on the dutch marktplaats but there are less peolple. When I think it will not go high, put a minimum on it.

Most times it's going the right way but not always. F.e. last sunday I bought myself a nice warm North Face jacket on the German Ebay. he told me he would ship to Holland and so that was ok. i won and he mailed me a much higher shipping rate because I bought it from him as a bargain. Well hey, that's the risk you take. We agreed at last not to make the transaction so at least it was fine.


I hear people talk here about withdrawing a bid? Is that you can delete a bid you did or am I stupid and dont understand English that much?

 

[orange71]

correct - you can retract a bid under certain circumstances on ebay.